Municipal Utilities earns reliability award

When a strong storm blew through Butler County at the end of May, causing damage across three counties, it took out power to more than 2,300 Poplar Bluff residents.

The after-hours outage impacted traffic signals, businesses and homes, but lasted less than 40 minutes.

The ability of Municipal Utilities to handle most power outages in under an hour, on average, has earned it yet another reliability award.

The Charlie Burgett Electric Reliability Award recognizes outstanding achievement by cities with a population of more than 10,000. The Poplar Bluff utility experienced an average system availability index of 99.99% in 2018.

The award comes from the Municipal Electric Systems of Oklahoma. MESO represents cities in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kansas.

A presentation was held Monday at the regular meeting of the Poplar Bluff City Council.

“It’s presented to the Poplar Bluff Municipal Utilities in recognition of its excellent record in electric reliability and customer service,” Mayor Robert Smith said, before presenting the award to Municipal Utilities General Manager Bill Bach. “Bill Bach, thank you so much.”

Municipal Utilities has received this award more than 10 times since 1995.

“The current operation standards and employee training standards of this utility are superior,” said MESO General Manager Tom Rider, in a press release, also saying the community benefits from local ownership of its utility.

Bach attributes the utility’s success to the hard work of its crews, and continued upgrades in equipment and construction standards of the industry.

“It’s the accumulation of all of the above that allows us to respond to an outage faster,” he said.

New technology provides specific addresses and locations of outages, he said. Before, a utility might know of a fault on a line and have to drive the entire line to find it, Bach explained.

When the May outage occurred, a provider was able to tell workers the problem had occurred four miles from the Morrison Road substation. They found a tree had fallen onto a power line. While the line wasn’t down, the tree grounded the line and caused a fault.

Electric systems have also seen improvements such as upgrades to insulated wires that reduce problems from wildlife.

Tree trimming additionally maintains an important 15-foot right of way, Bach said.

And ultimately, it is the crews in the field, the supervisors and the workers who make sure everything is done correctly, he sad.